Veeam protects Microsoft 365 data for Piraeus Bank’s 12,000 users

Piraeus Bank is focused on delivering the ultimate banking experience for its customers. The bank has received international recognition and several awards including Best Customer Service, Most Innovative Private Banking and Best Mobile Banking App.

Like many financial institutions, Piraeus Bank implemented Microsoft 365 to support its customers’ banking experience. However, the bank’s backup solution presented a challenge.

“The solution didn’t offer on-prem backup for Microsoft 365 data, so it was time to make a change,” said Lazaros Kalafatas, Servers Engineering Manager at Piraeus Bank. “Protecting that data is critical because it supports banking processes and customer communication. We wanted on-prem backup to give us control of our data.”

Kalafatas said Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Teams underpin banking processes such as loan applications, while Microsoft Exchange facilitates email for employees and notifications for customers. Each time customers make changes to their accounts (deposits, withdrawals, PIN modifications, etc.), they receive automated email notifications.

If data in Microsoft 365 is lost or corrupted, Piraeus Bank might not be able to deliver the ultimate banking experience, so Kalafatas and his colleagues contacted their IT partner Infinitum for advice. Infinitum is the only Platinum Veeam Value-Added Reseller (VVAR) in Greece. In addition, Infinitum is a Silver Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) and a Veeam Accredited Service Partner (VASP).

“Infinitum’s technicians are highly trained, experienced and collaborative, and they specialize in Veeam solutions,” Kalafatas said. “They explained why VeeamBackup for Microsoft 365 would be perfect for us: Veeam is scalable, so it can easily accommodate our 12,000 users, and Veeam is flexible, so we were able to maintain control of data in a hybrid configuration as we moved from Exchange on premises to Exchange Online.”

Veeam is flexible in additional ways. There is no vendor lock-in, so organizations can choose any infrastructure and backup repository that fits their business needs. Veeam supports nearly every hardware platform and cloud, making it easy for organizations to alter their infrastructures and add cloud options. Veeam also ensures flexible recovery point objectives (RPOs), enabling organizations to define different RPOs for different types of data in Microsoft 365.

Infinitum helped Piraeus Bank deploy Veeam to protect Microsoft 365 data supporting banking operations and customer communication. Veeam complies with the bank’s security and legal requirements and reduces the total cost of ownership for data protection by 30%. Piraeus Bank is one of many financial institutions in Greece that trusts Veeam to protect critical business data.

“Veeam is the most complete backup solution for Microsoft 365,” Kalafatas said. “It’s scalable, easy to use and plays a significant role in our business continuity and disaster recovery strategy. By protecting Microsoft 365 data, Veeam helps us deliver the ultimate banking experience for our customers.”

The Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Apollo Nodes with Scality Artesca software are being used at Piraeus Bank as the on-premise S3 Object backup repository (backup target) for Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365. The offered capacity allows Veeam software to back up 577 TB of data in Microsoft 365 to HPE Apollo Nodes with Scality Artesca. As per the RFP requirements, HPE offered a Veeam-certified (Veeam-ready Object repository), a co-designed with Scality (one-stop-shop) workload-optimized solution for on-premises S3 Object storage. The HPE Apollo Nodes with Scality Artesca is a reference design, an appliance-like experience solution. It consists of all the hardware and software components, that satisfied the availability, reliability, expandability, durability, operational efficiency, manageability, functionality and performance characteristics/requirements of Piraeus Bank.

Kyriakos Seimenis, Head of Data Protection in Infinitum’s Technical Department, helped the bank deploy Veeam as it migrated from on-prem Microsoft 365 to the cloud.

“Our goal is to help Piraeus Bank move their customers’ banking experience forward,” Seimenis said. “The best way to do that was a hybrid mode deployment of Veeam so they could maintain control of data supporting banking processes and customer communications as they migrated from Exchange on premises to Exchange Online. Veeam also offers the lowest RPO in the industry (at only five minutes) and meets compliance requirements with efficient eDiscovery of individual items.”

“One of the bank’s security requirements is on-prem backups, which Veeam provides,” Kalafatas said. “Another requirement is being able to recover 25 years’ worth of data for legal purposes, which Veeam backups enable. Compliance is easy now.”

 Kalafatas said one of the biggest benefits of using Veeam is high-speed recovery. Granular recovery capabilities including Veeam Explorers for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams enable the IT team to restore items quickly.

“Taking control of data recovery is very important,” Kalafatas continued. “In just a few clicks, we can access everything in Microsoft 365.”

Kalafatas said Veeam was more affordable than the previous backup solution.

“Veeam offers much better value for money, enabling us to reduce our total cost of ownership by 30%.”

• Protects data supporting banking operations and customer communication 
  Based on Microsoft’s shared responsibility model, we knew it was our responsibility to back up data,” Kalafatas said. “By backing up Microsoft 365 on premises, we reclaimed access and control of data supporting the banking experience for our customers.”
• Supports Piraeus Bank’s legal and regulatory compliance requirements 
  Veeam provides powerful search, flexible recovery and export options across the entire Microsoft 365 environment to make compliance easy and efficient.
• Reduces the total cost of ownership for data protection by 30% 
  Our old backup solution was outdated and expensive,” Kalafatas said. “Veeam provides modern data protection at an affordable price.”